1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information output technology related to a consumable component used in an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an image forming apparatus such as a copier, a printer, a facsimile machine, toner or ink is used as a recording material. When such consumable goods are used up, replacement with new consumable goods is necessary. A technology for predicting the replacement timing is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-196628 and the like.
Then, an image forming apparatus main body is composed of various members and components, and those members and components have difference life spans in general. For example, in the case of the copier, constituent parts such as a photosensitive drum, a fixing device, an intermediate transfer belt, and various types of rollers have relatively short life spans, so it is necessary to replace those constituent members before the end of the main body life in general. Depending on a machine, a plurality of these parts are made into an integrated cartridge form, thereby reducing the replacing frequency and improving the customer's convenience.
Many of these consumable goods often need specific consumable goods corresponding to the main body model unlike a film for cameras or the like. This is because in order to develop higher quality apparatuses, manufacturers commonly develop apparatuses while conforming to characteristics of the consumable goods.
For this reason, these consumable goods will be purchased by the customers as long as the customers continue to use the main body machine even after the production and sales of the main body machine discontinue. Thus, the manufacturers and distributors of the main body machine of the image forming apparatus have a duty to sell these consumable goods.
However, when a newer model machine is introduced into the market, the older main body machine is either typically replaced or used less frequently as the life of the main body machine itself approaches the end year after year.
If the main body machines are not used, the sales amount of the consumable goods is reduced, and the manufacturing cost of the consumable goods is increased. For the manufacturer, the sales of the consumable goods become a large burden. For the customers, replacement to a new model at an appropriate timing is beneficial because the customers can typically buy a more modern machine with a higher quality and enhanced specifications. Also, in many cases, even the running cost is lowered.
From this standpoint, for discontinuation of the consumable goods, the manufacturer may announce for example, by providing information on the company's homepage, to the customers at an appropriate timing. Also, information about the discontinuation of the product is also sometimes incorporated in printed products describing the discontinuation information in a product package or labels the information on the product itself.
However, even when the manufacturer side adopts any one of the above-mentioned methods for the discontinuation notification indicating a planed product life, not all the users are necessarily provided with an appropriate notification at an appropriate timing. This is because the users of the discontinuation target machine do not necessarily check, for example, for such information on the company's homepage.
Also, even when the discontinuation information is put on the product, the users see only information deemed necessary at the time in many cases. In particular, in the case of the consumable goods, the same products are repeatedly purchased, the description content of the product package has less attention, and all the information on the product package are not necessarily read. Therefore, the users are likely to miss the discontinuation information.
Thus, in many circumstances, the methods of notifying the users of the discontinuation information at an appropriate timing are not realized, which may lead to a problem of a user's claim of lack of proper notification or the like when the consumable goods are discontinued while the users are not aware of the information.
For this reason, a system with which the users can be appropriately notified of the consumable goods discontinuation information at an appropriate timing is desired.